Room for Love by Andrea Meyer Read Free Book Online Page B

kids—boy, girl, boy—with dirt on their faces climbing tangled trees in the sprawling backyard of our charming Catskills cottage, one of the boys tumbling from a branch, scraping his chin, crying for Daddy. I guess my intentions became clear, because Jeremy interrupted my reverie with a non sequitur: “My ex-boyfriend used to work at a bar on a beach in Spain.” I was like, “Come again?” We had not been talking about Spain or bars or beaches. The only relevance was a sexual preference that Jeremy apparently thought he needed to insert, however gracelessly, into the conversation. I was crushed.
    â€œWhere’s Boytoy?” Jeremy asks, referring to Jake.
    â€œIn the shithouse,” I slur.
    â€œNo blowjobs for a week.”
    Courtney takes the opportunity to cut in. “Would you miss his birthday, Jacq? I don’t think so.” She kisses Jeremy before running off to supervise the quarters game.
    â€œOh, baby, you need a drink.” Jeremy orders me another, after taking his cell phone out of his pocket, looking at it puzzled, and putting it back. I shake my head. Jeremy is a victim of what I call compulsive ob-cell-sive disorder, an affliction that causes poor souls like Jeremy to constantly hear their cell phones ringing when in fact they are not. A bus screeches to a halt and he thinks it’s his phone. A baby cries, gunfire roars from a TV set, the Beatles sing “Magical Mystery Tour” on the radio—and Jeremy fumbles frantically for his cell, which is silently snoozing in his pocket.
    â€œLooks like you could get Stefan in the sack,” Jeremy says, checking his silent cell again and sadly putting it back in his pocket. Stefan, the chiseled, still-struggling actor who once trampled my heart, throws a practiced come-hither look my way from the back of the bar, his scruffy bangs falling seductively over penetrating brown eyes.
    â€œYou think so?” I ask. “He just told me my tits look terrific.”
    â€œIsn’t that what you were going for in that dress? He’s looking good.”
    â€œI can’t go back there. Our breakup landed me in therapy for two years.” Jeremy puts his arm around me in commiseration. “You know, Jake had this really important meeting tonight with a gallery owner. They probably had to have drinks afterwards or something,” I tell him. “Maybe it’s a good sign?”
    â€œDid he say he was coming?”
    â€œWell, he was going to try, but it wasn’t definite,” I say.
    â€œPardon me while I cringe,” says my sister, appearing from out of nowhere, a phantom invoked by any reference to my bad boytoy.
    Courtney is on her heels. “Stop making excuses for him,” she says. “He should be here.”
    As I slam the rest of my drink, wincing as the lime juice burns the back of my throat on the way down, my phone rings: Boytoy dialing up from the shithouse.
    â€œHey,” he says in the I’m-so-tired-I-can-barely-move-let-alone-get-on-a-subway tone I recognize as the one he uses every time he flakes. “I just woke up.”
    â€œI didn’t know you were sleeping,” I say, pushing my way to the front of the bar to escape the indignant glares of my friends.
    â€œYeah, I stopped at home to drop off my stuff and passed out in front of Seinfeld, ” he says. He’s missing my birthday for reruns.
    Courtney, Alicia, and Jeremy circle like vultures. I know if I talk loud enough to alert my protective posse to this turn of events, my relationship with Jake will be in peril. There’s always someone trying to guilt me into breaking up with the assholes in my life. As if I didn’t know they were bad for me without my loved ones’ disapproval. Don’t they know that I choose the drama? That I thrive on it? That I wouldn’t know what to do with a life empty of senseless acts of self-destruction?
    â€œJake, can I call you back in two